Night Shift
by FantasiaWandering
Summary: A late night conversation while Donnie works the night shift shows Leo that even after the victory over Winters, he still has a lot to learn. Fortunately, Donnie is very good at fixing things.


The ghostly lights flickered through the doorway, kindling memory in return. Stars streaking across a dark sky. Moonlight reflecting off a quiet pool. Flames dancing as homes burned. And then he shook himself, and memory resolved itself into familiar territory once more. There, the battered couch. There, the grappling gun left half-assembled on the table. There, the skateboard dropped carelessly in the middle of the room.

"Mikey," Leo breathed. With a small shake of his head, he picked up the board and leaned it against the wall, out of the way of wandering feet. That accomplished, he crossed the darkened room to peer into the lab beyond.

His brother sat surrounded by glowing monitors - this one streaming incident reports from the police networks, that one peppered with lines of glowing code, another displaying a muted television show featuring two men crammed into some sort of basement filled with toys and abandoned computer equipment. Myriad wires connected Donatello's chair to the computers and to the wall, a spider at the heart of a technological web.

"Uh-huh. Have you tried turning it off and turning it on again? Uh-huh. Is it plugged in? Yeah, there you go. No, no, it's okay. No, really. Good luck with your term paper, miss." Donatello punched a key on the pad in the arm of the chair, and sighed deeply.

"Donnie, why are you still up?"

Donnie glanced over at Leo and smirked. "I'm doing my _job_, Leo. Someone had to work the night shift." He leaned back, folding his arms. "Now, same question, positions reversed."

Leo shrugged. "Jet lag."

"Nice try, but you were at practically the same longitude, and it's been weeks." He hooked a smaller rolling chair with his foot to drag it over, and shoved Leo down into it. Before Leo could protest, Donnie was shining a light into his face. The thick lenses of the goggles Donnie had pulled over his eyes made them enormous, and only slightly terrifying. "Have you been sleepless often since the Winters thing? I'm still not sure what they shot you full of. Experiencing nausea? Shortness of breath? Irritability?"

"I'm experiencing irritability _now_," Leo muttered, and shoved Donnie's hand aside. "I'm _fine_, Donnie. I just saw the lights, and wondered…" He gestured at the glowing bank of monitors. "Why are you still doing this?"

"I told you, it's the night shift. Somebody has to be here for the sophmores who fry their computers trying to pull all-nighters."

"That's not what I meant." He looked back at the monitors, still marvelling at the fact that Donnie managed to make sense of so many things at once.

Donnie frowned, tapping a few keys. "I know. But with Mikey throwing in the towel, someone in this family has to stay gainfully employed. I mean, I don't hold it against him - I was monitoring those parties, and tiny children in sparkly dresses are _vicious_ - but if you guys like eating food that hasn't come out of a dumpster, it's this or breaking into a 7/11, and we usually tend to beat up the kind of people who do that."

Reality spun, and it wasn't because of the wheelie chair. Leo leaned heavily on the arm as the implications started to sink in. "I never thought…"

"You were busy worrying about other stuff," Donnie said with a shrug. "And I wasn't so good at the leading a ninja team thing, but finding the most productive use of our time? _That_ I could do. I mean, at first it was just a way to keep Mikey busy and get him to burn off some energy, because he was just getting more and more hyper we were all going crazy. But with Raph off being Nightwatcher all the time-"

Leo's elbow slipped off the arm of the chair. "Wait, you _knew_ about that?"

Donnie raised a disdainful brow at him. "Leo, I'm a genius. I built a functional tracking system out of garbage when I was twelve. Of course I knew."

"Then why didn't you say anything?"

Donnie's grin had an edge to it, as he tapped on his keyboard. "Have you ever watched video of Old Faithful?"

"Noooo," Leo said slowly, his brows drawing together.

"It's actually quite fascinating," Donnie said, calling a video up on the screen. "Water seeps through the ground until it encounters magma, but cooler water coming down from above seals it in, a little like the lid on a pressure cooker, which lets the water below become superheated until-" He fell silent as a torrent of water burst from the ground. "Lets off the pressure. You know what happens if it doesn't?" His grin widened as Leo shook his head. "Giant explosion. Smoking crater. No survivors."

"And this has to do with Raph because-?"

Donnie snorted. "Have you _met_ Raph?" He shook his head. "I know I could have handled it better… but it was what he needed. He couldn't help with the whole money thing. And while you were gone, there was the whole April and Casey thing."

"Wait," Leo raised his hands. "What thing? I thought April's business was doing great and they moved in together."

"Well, yeah, business was picking up," Donnie said. "And she finally started making enough to hire Casey. But you know she's been supporting us since day one. Yeah, she's said again and again it's payment for saving her life a bunch of times, but trying to run a business, and maintain a relationship, all while financially supporting a house full of teenage ninjas and their dad?" Donnie frowned, looking at the crater on his monitor. "I worked out just how much it was costing them, and checked the statistics on how many relationships survive financial troubles. The cracks were starting to show." Brightening, he gestured at his monitors. "So. Job."

Leo stared in shock at his brother, suddenly regretting the third slice of pizza with dinner as it threatened to come back up again. "I- _why_ didn't I see it?"

A gentle hand came to rest on his shoulder. He was almost afraid to look up, but there was no accusation in Donnie's eyes. Just a quiet regret. "Because you were busy trying to see ways to keep us all alive." He patted Leo's shoulder lightly. "There's a reason we work best as a team, you know. And for what it's worth, I'm really glad you're back."

A quiet beep sounded from Donnie's console, and he let out a long breath. "Checkout time." With a few precise keystrokes, the main monitors began to power down, leaving only the subsystems that continuously monitored the emergency bands. Pushing himself out of his chair, he turned and offered Leo a hand. "Time to sleep now?"

"Yeah. Time to sleep." Leo took the proffered hand, but he didn't let go once he gained his feet. "Don, for what it's worth? I left the right person in charge."

Donnie blinked at him for a moment before a grin tugged at the corner of his mouth, and he put an arm around Leo's shoulders. "Come on. Let's get you to bed. You're delirious."

But Donnie's arm stayed where it was until Leo had been firmly deposited back into bed. And for the first time since his return to New York, his sleep was untroubled by the ghosts of the jungle.


End file.
